Samsung Electronics shares soar to a record high! Report: Company plans to raise HBM4 chip prices by 30%

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Driven by the tight supply situation of AI memory, Samsung Electronics' stock price soared to a record high on Thursday. Previously, Korean media reported that the chip manufacturer was negotiating prices for the latest generation of AI memory chip HBM4, with quoted prices up to 30% higher than the previous generation.

According to Korea's Chosun Daily, Samsung plans to price HBM4 at about $700 per chip, far above the mid-range price of $500 that competitor SK Hynix set for Nvidia last August. This pricing strategy highlights that the supply-demand imbalance in the AI memory market is continuing to worsen.

The shortage of memory chips is boosting the performance of Samsung and SK Hynix and has helped Korea's benchmark Kospi index to rise 32% year-to-date, becoming the world's best-performing stock market. On Thursday, Samsung's stock price on the Korean exchange once rose by 5.4%, after the market had been closed for three days due to holidays.

Pricing power returns to Samsung

Samsung Electronics' HBM4 quotation of up to $700 has attracted widespread market attention, and institutions generally believe this reflects the ongoing tight landscape of the AI memory market.

Charu Chanana, Chief Investment Strategist at Saxo Markets, said that Samsung's HBM4 quotation once again highlights the industry's "pricing power." He stated:

"This indicates that the AI memory market remains tight, and Samsung believes itself to have regained some pricing advantage in the high-end market."

Bloomberg Industry Research analyst Masahiro Wakasugi pointed out in a research report that the $700 price means Samsung HBM4's operating profit margin will reach 50% to 60%. The report said:

"If Samsung supplies more HBM chips to Nvidia, the average selling price gap between Samsung and SK Hynix will narrow in 2026, since Nvidia's price should be higher than other customers."

According to Chosun Daily, citing unnamed industry sources, SK Hynix may follow Samsung's higher pricing, further reinforcing the upward price trend in the industry.

Samsung races to catch up in the AI competition

After falling behind SK Hynix in the early stage of the AI competition, Samsung is now speeding up its efforts to catch up. Last week, the company announced it had begun mass production of HBM4 chips and was shipping commercial products to customers. HBM4 is a high-performance memory chip specifically designed for artificial intelligence applications and is critical for training and running large AI models.

This development signifies that Samsung's competitiveness in the high-bandwidth memory market is recovering. The ongoing shortage of memory chips is creating a favorable market environment for Korean chip manufacturers such as Samsung and SK Hynix, enabling them to maintain strong pricing power in the high-end AI chip market.

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